Tips

Images help bring your story to life and you can use them on almost all your promotional materials. If your program is just getting started, you can use stock photos. If you have your own, you can edit them using free tools available online.

Animated media offers a break from text and stills. You can create a video from photos you took at an event, or you can use a video camera to take some action shots and interviews of participants. If you’re interested in putting together a video, these tools can help you.

A website or blog can help you spread the word about your dialogues, post pictures and stories from your events, and share your success with your community and potential funders. The task of setting up and maintaining a website can seem daunting, but these tools will have you reaching out to your community in no time.

While you know volunteers can benefit your program, the task of recruiting them can seem challenging. No doubt, people view their time as a well-guarded, precious resource and it can be hard to give that up. Check out these ten strategies to help you get organized and let people know they're making a difference so you can recruit more volunteers.

Social media can help support your program’s efforts, and it is possible to have an active community online. However, there are some common pitfalls you need to avoid in order to keep the discussion going.

Resources

This exercise is designed to help you have a conversation about how your community’s racial dynamics may be impacting your work as you move forward to act on the ideas generated from the dialogues. It will help you think about how you can work together more equitably as a team during this phase of the process.

This activity is designed to help coalition and action team members evaluate action ideas and make decisions where the group has a chance for success. Small groups should use this tool before making a decision on which actions to pursue.

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Images help bring your story to life and you can use them on almost all your promotional materials. If your program is just getting started, you can use stock photos. If you have your own, you can edit them using free tools available online.

Our ultimate goal is to create positive community change that includes everyone, and we believe that our tools, advice, and resources will help foster that kind of change. Whether you’re grappling with a divisive community issue, or simply want to include residents’ voices in city government, the dialogue to change program can help community members take action and make their voice heard.

Everyday Democracy

Our mission is to help communities talk and work together to create communities that work for everyone. We work directly with local communities, providing advice and training and flexible how-to resources. Since our founding in 1989, we’ve worked with hundreds of communities across the United States on issues such as racial equity, poverty reduction, education reform, and building strong neighborhoods. We work with national, regional and state organizations in order to leverage our resources and to expand the reach and impact of civic engagement processes and tools. Our ultimate aim is to help create communities that value everyone’s voice and work for everyone, and to help create a strong national democracy that upholds these principles.